A fantasy sport (also known as rotisserie, roto, or fairy-tale sport; or owner simulation) is a game where fantasy owners build a team that competes against other fantasy owners based on the statistics generated by individual players or teams of a professional sport. Probably the most common variant converts statistical performance into points that are compiled and totaled according to a roster selected by a manager that makes up a fantasy team. These point systems are typically simple enough to be manually calculated by a “league commissioner.” More complex variants use computer modeling of actual games based on statistical input generated by professional sports. It is estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that 16 million adults in the U.S., age 18 to 55, play fantasy sports. Fantasy sports is also popular throughout the world with leagues for football, cricket and other non-U.S. based sports.
Just like in real professional sports, such as NFL football, each year fantasy leagues have a draft in which each team drafts players. There are essentially two types of fantasy sports drafts, “serpentine” (or “snake”) drafts and auction drafts. In a traditional “serpentine” or “snake” draft, owners take turns drafting players in a “serpentine” method, i.e. the owner who picks 1st in the odd rounds picks last in the even rounds, in the interests of fairness. In an auction draft, each owner has an (imaginary) budget which he must use to purchase all his players in an auction format, i.e. players are nominated and bid on, and the owner who bids the highest on each player receives that player (reducing their remaining budget accordingly).
Auction style drafting is growing in popularity among fantasy sports leagues because it makes the draft process more exciting, and offers participants more of a chance to acquire the players they want.
The auction drafting process must be managed by a person—usually a league's designated “commissioner.” This draft manager (or commissioner) establishes nomination orders, coordinates the nomination and bidding processes, and enters the names of purchased players either into a document or an online database for future reference. Since leagues normally consist of more than 8 teams, this drafting process can be complicated to manage and usually takes several hours to complete. In addition, fantasy auction drafts require a higher level of aptitude from its participants than other types of fantasy sports drafts (e.g. “serpentine” drafts).
A problem with live online auctions in general is that they require at least three individual people to implement: an auctioneer, an online bid monitor, and a bid taker. If more than one buyer is bidding over the phone or online, typically one human bid taker is required for each such buyer. In scenarios outside of fantasy sports, it is not unusual to see five or more workers required to conduct an auction. The advantage of a live auction, of course, is that it can occur quickly—sometimes selling products in a matter of minutes—and in real time. It need only continue until the auctioneer sees that there are no more bids, at which point the highest bidder wins. This maximizes competition and excitement, but true excitement requires several people to implement. In an online sports fantasy environment with thousands of leagues participating, having thousands of auction workers to run a draft would simply not be possible.
Another problem with an auction draft that is managed by a live auctioneer and has bidders in the room raising paddles or hands in order to indicate a bid is that should two people bid close the same time, determining the winning bidder becomes a subjective decision by the auctioneer. The problem becomes even greater when a draft is managed by a live auctioneer and there are participants bidding remotely (via the phone, instant messaging technology, etc.). In this scenario, there is not always a fair opportunity for remote participants to win a bid due to network latency issues.